Well, we have been on our vacation for just over 2 weeks, so we were bound to need a little more excitement in our lives, right? This morning, Curt and I took the boys to the local park to play before it might rain. They were running around and having a BLAST for a good half hour. This park has one of those single post centrifugal force pieces with the small foot piece at the bottom. Brady had asked Curt to spin him on it (slowly) and so he did a few times, and then of course held it still for Brady to be abel to get off. Aidan then decides he too wants a spin and I hear Curt say "Now let me know when you want to get off" as he begins to spin it (I was watching Gavin play with a pinwheel in one of the yards that butts up to the park), when all of a sudden I hear the "pain" cry. Aidan is laying on the ground next to the equipment (torture device?) and is just SOBBING. He is also FILTHY as he seems to have been flung off of it into the dirt and woodchips. Curt tells me that after he told Aidan to let him know what happen, Aidan proceeded to just let go of the equipment. Physics is not on your side when this happens. So Curt and I are both giggling a little bit as we try to clean Aidan off and help him calm down. Aidan then proceeds to sit in Curt's lap the ENTIRE rest of the time we are at the park (a good 30-45 minutes). This is pretty unusual, even for Aidan, but we sort of chalked it up to it probably scared him/knocked the wind out of him.
When we get him home he is still whimpering and wants to be held. For the next 2 hours. I'm starting to think we probably need to take him to see someone when I pick him up to put him in his booster for lunch. As my hand goes under his left arm pit, the poor kid COLLAPSES into tears and a scream of pain. I try to calm him, and take him to the couch to do some light poking and prodding. It is clear his collarbone is what hurts and it hurts bad. I get him back in his seat for lunch (it's urgent, but not an emergency) let Curt know after lunch i'm going to take him somewhere and then get stuff together. Since it's sunday afternoon, no walk in clinics are open (though I figured he'd need an x-ray anyway) so our good friend Julie Carroll, Aidan and I head for the ER. We were seen by a nurse in about 5 minutes, the dr. about 30 mins after that, and had our xray completed within an hour and a half of arrival. Aidan even got a good hour and a half nap sleeping on me (so yummy!). Not too shabby. The Dr. was great and said Aidan has a "Green Stick" fracture. The bone has "bent", but it's not a splintered break like an adult might get and isn't such that it needs to be reset. That's the good news. He also says kids this age tend to heal much faster than adults, so 6-8 weeks might not be how long before it's totally healed and he said he will feel noticeably better MUCH before that. The bad news is, he DOES NOT like wearing the sling (it's basically meant to be a visual cue for him, us, his brothers to go easy on that arm) and if he falls again he could make it worse.
We get home after our trip and Julie says her good byes and we explain the situation to Brady and Gavin and then Uncle Matt, Grandma and I take the boys to Culver's for some greasy, yummy fast food and ice cream! I mean, it IS our first broken bone. I only wish I could know it would be our last. :) Curt and grandpa are actually in Iowa City looking at the top two houses Curt and I had viewed yesterday when we went house hunting, so we kept them apprised with updates. They were jealous THEY didn't get to go to Culver's with us. :)
I will admit, in the past any time I have heard about kids this young getting a broken bone, I have always sort of wondered about it. How could it REALLY happen to a kid unless they weren't being properly supervised, yaddahyaddahyaddah. Well, I shall now dine on all of those accusatory thoughts. :)
I'll update with some pictures of the boys on our summer adventures soon! :)
